Good day to everyone!

Updates: It's Rat again, with some general updates on our progress. We are currently halfway through our demo version of the game, or the "pre-demo," as I've so lovingly nicknamed it. The demo itself will be about 4 days of content (Day 0-Day 3) of the plot. Currently, the "pre-demo" encompasses Days 0-1, with structural elements as placeholders, and is mainly assessed for storyline, pacing, and general playability. We have asked a couple of people to alpha-test the game and give feedback, and so far the feedback has been largely positive! It's super encouraging to see people appreciating the story so far, and being invested in what happens moving forward.

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As of now, our game has lots of placeholders in place of the sprites that are currently being worked on by the artist. This has forced (read: allowed) me to utilize the only free sprites that have already existed on my computer: sprites from the Death Note game. And here is the kicker: I have NEVER watched Death Note! I have definitely heard all about Death Note (I mean, who hasn't? 😂 ), but I never got the chance to really sit down and watch Death Note.

Here's the lore of this: when I was in college, I was a chemical engineering major and I was taking a Transport Processes class (think like the exchange of mass and energy). For one of our projects, because I am ✨ super ✨ extra, I created a small game to demonstrate the process of conduction. Of course, I used free sprites, and the only sprites that I had found at that time were from a free website that carried all the Death Note sprites, so OF COURSE I had to make the main player, the ultimate, infamous, Light Yagami. I had no idea who any of the other characters were, and just used whoever I thought looked appropriate (and one of the sprites really reminded me of my professor at the time). I also used walking sprites at the time, and the tiny Light Yagami character always looked like he was moon-walking across the screen, which used to make me laugh so hard (I still sometimes chuckle just thinking about it).

The basic storyline goes: 

• Light is offered a job in which he has to relocate to Antarctica and build his own house. 
• Light goes through his old Transport II notes and reads up on conduction while explaining it to the audience.
• Light then attempts to outline how he will build his house but fails.
• Light goes to Dr. Professor and asks him for help with his house.
• Dr. Professor explains composite walls to the student.
• Light then attempts to outline his house again and succeeds/fails.

Years later, here we are with our project, V:ACS. I took one look at my old files, and all of my sprites were Death Note characters–what a blast from the past! So, without further ado, I have used all the sprites I have as placeholders for all of our characters, and it has been increasingly amusing to Annie, as she has watched Death Note before. She likes to try to guess who I will choose for some of our V:ACS characters because she thinks I make the craziest decisions. I have included some of our demo placeholders below. The main highlights for me are the double Light Yagami's (note that they are mirrored 😂 ), and the Jones Brothers (they just looked like they could have been brothers...!).

It still really cracks me up just thinking about it...we always joke that once the game is fully released, I owe it to myself to watch Death Note in its entirety and match some of these faces to names and really understand who these characters are. I have this really crazy version of Light Yagami in my head based on what I have heard about this guy, and it has led me to make some weird decisions for him whilst making this game 😂 . Someday, I'll post a snippet of my version of the script in the VERY BEGINNING of this project, featuring Light Yagami (in my head) when I was first showcasing Godot and playing around with the game engine. Maybe that will be a Patreon perk? Haha.

Anyway, thanks for listening to this ramble, and I will see you next time!

Signing off,

Rat